Google shows off Chrome Web Store

Google has shown off its Chrome Web store at its annual I/O conference, with the first raft of applications including a magazine app from Sports Illustrated and games like Plants Vs Zombies and

Lego: Star Wars

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With Chrome OS on the verge of making its appearance, the applications store that will be key to the applications tab that will be at the heart of the browser/OS hybrid.

Google showed off some of the work that it has been doing on the store, with some interesting concepts shown at I/O.

Sports Illustrated

Those included a Sports Illustrated Chrome app, which rendered impressive looking magazine type pages and video in the browser window and, of course, the mass of Google applications including Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Docs.

The store offers paid-for apps, including big name games like Bejewelled 2, Fifia World Cup 2010 and, of course, Scrabble.

Google has not given a date for the launch of the store, although the internet giant did say that the Chrome Web store will be available to developers soon.

Chrome OS

That would give developers time to get their applications and tools ready for the launch of the first Google Chrome OS devices, still on course for the end of 2010 and beginning of 2011.

Acer recently denied that it was due to chow off a Chrome OS device at Computex, but the world is eagerly awaiting the first netbook that sports Google's idea of the future of cloud computing.